| Paul Moore | 8802f61 | 2006-08-03 16:45:49 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | NetLabel Introduction |
| 2 | ============================================================================== |
| 3 | Paul Moore, paul.moore@hp.com |
| 4 | |
| 5 | August 2, 2006 |
| 6 | |
| 7 | * Overview |
| 8 | |
| 9 | NetLabel is a mechanism which can be used by kernel security modules to attach |
| 10 | security attributes to outgoing network packets generated from user space |
| 11 | applications and read security attributes from incoming network packets. It |
| 12 | is composed of three main components, the protocol engines, the communication |
| 13 | layer, and the kernel security module API. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | * Protocol Engines |
| 16 | |
| 17 | The protocol engines are responsible for both applying and retrieving the |
| 18 | network packet's security attributes. If any translation between the network |
| 19 | security attributes and those on the host are required then the protocol |
| 20 | engine will handle those tasks as well. Other kernel subsystems should |
| 21 | refrain from calling the protocol engines directly, instead they should use |
| 22 | the NetLabel kernel security module API described below. |
| 23 | |
| 24 | Detailed information about each NetLabel protocol engine can be found in this |
| 25 | directory, consult '00-INDEX' for filenames. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | * Communication Layer |
| 28 | |
| 29 | The communication layer exists to allow NetLabel configuration and monitoring |
| 30 | from user space. The NetLabel communication layer uses a message based |
| 31 | protocol built on top of the Generic NETLINK transport mechanism. The exact |
| 32 | formatting of these NetLabel messages as well as the Generic NETLINK family |
| 33 | names can be found in the the 'net/netlabel/' directory as comments in the |
| 34 | header files as well as in 'include/net/netlabel.h'. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | * Security Module API |
| 37 | |
| 38 | The purpose of the NetLabel security module API is to provide a protocol |
| 39 | independent interface to the underlying NetLabel protocol engines. In addition |
| 40 | to protocol independence, the security module API is designed to be completely |
| 41 | LSM independent which should allow multiple LSMs to leverage the same code |
| 42 | base. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Detailed information about the NetLabel security module API can be found in the |
| 45 | 'include/net/netlabel.h' header file as well as the 'lsm_interface.txt' file |
| 46 | found in this directory. |